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At the risk of going into something that's been done to death, and yes,
check the archives....
I had a 450 page manual, no graphics but a huge number of styles and
fields, suddenly become un-openable in MS Word last week, at the
critical moment in the release cycle. On a PII 400 with 128 MB of RAM,
no less. I had to convert it to FrameMaker overnight to meet my
deliverable date. The fact that Eric and Mike made it to 400+ and 600
pages in MS Word is a testament to the way that they structured and
handled the files. And I would have been in their camp absolutely, as
one of Word's biggest fans, if it hadn't left me on the side of the road
last week. There does seem to be an upper bound, and you can't tell
where it is until you've crossed it, it seems.
BTW, the conversion to Frame was fairly straightforward, the formats
carried through, and I was able to get it back under control in 24
hours. Guess what I recommend? :)
Gerard, do check the archive. There was a good response to the list a
week or so ago comparing some of the major dtp applications that can
probably point you on your way. Good luck.
-Rebecca
-----Original Message-----
From: Wing, Michael J [mailto:mjwing -at- INGR -dot- COM]
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 1999 12:06 PM
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: Re: Question concerning Word Processing Software.
I converted a 600 page UNIX-based (tagged ASCII) manual to MSWord last
year.
It had over 200 screenshots. Like, Tom, I grouped the information into
files of a manageable sizes. I also linked all graphics (no embedded
graphics). I used RD fields for the index and TOC. I even used the
.doc
files as source for the online help. I did this by bookmarking blocks
of
text in the .doc files and referencing the bookmarks (using fields)
between
headers in the .rtf files. Collapsed, the .rtf files looked was nothing
but
headers and gray field codes.
Absolutely, no problems with Word in doing this.
Mike
Michael Wing (mailto:mjwing -at- ingr -dot- com)
Staff Writer/ Web Applications Developer
Intergraph Corporation; Huntsville, Alabama http://maps.intergraph.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Herme [SMTP:hermet -at- DNINEVADA -dot- COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 1999 10:59 AM
> To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject: Re: Question concerning Word Processing Software.
>
> What problems are you having with Word? I use it to produce a 430-page
> manual
> that includes many bitmapped screen captures. The key is to chunk
material
> into
> manageable (and logical, of course) file sizes, and then tie all your
> files
> together for generating an index, table of contents, and so on. Word
is
> definitely a resource hog, but if a person has the resources
(processor,
> video
> card/memory, RAM, and so on) the job can be done.
>
> Tom
>
>
